[278]

It has been stated that the decision to sell X was a political one, rather than financial one. Both Y & Z, who were involved in the transaction were cordial to neutral towards each other.
Y wanted to get rid of X as it was difficult for them to protect it, due to its proximity to Britain’s empire. While Z thought of it as a bargain, getting it at an equivalent of $129 million in 2023.
Give me X, Y & Z.

Show Answer
X - Alaska, Y - Russian Empire, Z - United States
Remember, Canada was under the Britain control at the time, which Russia did not appreciate.
Read More.

[277]

Hosting the Olympic Games is considered a great honour in sports, with 7-10 countries competing in general.
However, when the bid for 2024 Olympics was being decided, the IOC took a decision which was a first in the history of the games.
What was different about the selection process for the 2024 Olympics?

Show Answer
For the selection of 2024 Olympics (done in 2017) there were only 2 bidders. Fearing no bidders for the next iteration, the Committee handed out 2 consecutive hosting rights at the same session, Paris - 2024 & Los Angeles - 2028.
It is an open secret that the Olympic Games drain more from the economy that they put into.
Watch This Video for a deep dive on the topic.

[276]

The word X comes from Old French word meaning leather bag. Over the years, the word X started to mean the contents rather than the bag itself.
In India, X left its etymological roots in 2019 & again in 2021 when it went paperless.
Identify X.

Show Answer
The Budget
In the mid 18th century, the Chancellor of the Exchequer, in presenting his annual statement, was said ‘to open the budget’. In the late 19th century the use of the term was extended from governmental to other finances.
In India the budget was usually carried in a briefcase, but in 2019 it came in a 'bahi khata' & in 2021 in a 'Made in India' tab.
Read More.

[275]

X was ‘born’ in 1959. Over the years they have held many positions, always keeping up with the trends.
1989 – Pilot
1991 – Navy Admiral
1993 – Medical Sergeant
1995 – Fire Fighter
2004 – President
Can you identify who am I talking about?

Show Answer
Barbie
Mattel estimates that the doll has had over 200 jobs, with more focus on STEM areas recently.
Read More.

[274]

X is a bone found in a majority of mammals, including some primates, however absent in humans.
People have used X from different animals to fashion various kinds of tools.
Some historians also argue that it was infact Adam’s X and not the rib which was taken away to give life to Eve.
Solve for X.

Show Answer
Baculum or the penis bone, present in more animals than you think.
Theory:
The loss of the bone in humans, when it is present in our nearest related species the chimpanzee, is thought to be because humans "evolved a mating system in which the male tended to accompany a particular female all the time to try to ensure paternity of her children" which allows for frequent matings of short duration. Observation suggests that primates with a baculum only infrequently encounter females, but engage in longer periods of copulation that the baculum makes possible, thereby maximizing their chances of fathering the female's offspring. Human females exhibit concealed ovulation also known as hidden estrus, meaning it is almost impossible to tell when the female is fertile, so frequent matings would be necessary to ensure paternity
TLDR: Other animals go in and go out, so need a bone to impress. Human tend to stick around, so boning - not that important.
Apparently a good heart was too stiff a competition for the baculum.
Read More.

[273]

X has a long list of firsts – the first Black woman to be elected district attorney in California history, first woman to be California’s attorney general, etc.
In 2020, she made the news when her Wikipedia page was edited over 500 times, allegedly to scrub controversial information, including her “tough-on-crime” record.
Who am I talking about?

Show Answer
Kamala Harris, the Democratic nominee for the 2024 US elections.
She was born in Oakland, California on October 20, 1964, the eldest of two children born to Shyamala Gopalan, a cancer researcher from India, and Donald Harris, an economist from Jamaica.
Read More about her life's work (so far).

[272]

During the American Liquor Prohibition period, Southern California elites would go to Tijuana for a drink. It was in this time period that X opened a restaurant in Tijuana.
According to an urban legend, on July 4th, 1924 the restaurant received too many guests & X threw together whatever leftovers he had. The dish was originally supposed to be a finger food, but has become an emperor of a dish.
What am I talking about?

Show Answer
Caesar Salad.
Yes the dish is named after an Italian American chef, rather than the emperor of Rome.
Read More about its history.

[271]

The name of the album X was an allusion to mental state of the band rather than any relation to the physical place. In fact, it was performed with the suffix A Piece for Assorted Lunatics.
Reaching X has always been a challenge given its ‘hidden’ nature. In 2018, China was the first county to touch base with it.
Identify X.

Show Answer
Dark Side of the Moon/Far Side of the Moon. The band in question is Pink Floyd.
Waters conceived an album that dealt with things that "make people mad", focusing on the pressures associated with the band's arduous lifestyle, and dealing with the mental health problems suffered by the former band member Syd Barrett.
Humans first touched down on the moon on 20 July 1969. Read More.

[270]

X is usually encountered when something unexpected occurs. While the origin of the term is unknown, according to one theory – it was because there was no logical option give to the user on encountering X.
Over the years, the company behind X tried to soften impact of X by adding an emoticon.
Can you guess what am I talking about?

Show Answer
Blue Screen of Death
Officially called the stop screen, or stop error, the blue screen of death (BSOD) is a most unwanted error, second only to malware or ransomware in indicating that a user is in for a very bad day. It comes with no warning and all unsaved work is immediately lost. And given what it indicates, that could be the least of a user's problems.
Read More about the outage faced by millions of users recently.
win

[269]

Connect the following images to a Brand.

classic

Show Answer
Royal Enfield, with the clues being the different bikes that the company makes.
From top left, going in clockwise direction, the clues are:
Guerrilla
Continental
Himalyan
Meteor
Shotgun
Bullet

[268]

It’s is no secret that the last time England won the Football World Cup was in 1966.
However, the tournament was also the debut tournament for two teams. The first was Portugal. The second was a country from Asia.
Identify the second country.

Show Answer
North Korea
North Korea actually beat Italy 1–0 on the way to reaching the quarter-finals, where they lost to Portugal 5–3.
North Korea & England were not the best friends at the time. Read about the Political Gymnastics the hosts (England) did for the event.

[267]

Associated Press photographer Evan Vucci is known for his coverage in the Iraq & Afghanistan wars. He even won a Pulitzer in 2021 for covering the aftermath and protests of the death of George Floyd.
Evan is in the news recently for his coverage of an event which is ‘one for the history books’.
Can you identify the event?

Show Answer
Donald Trump's attempted assassination attempt.
When he heard popping sounds, Vucci, who has covered combat situations in Iraq and Afghanistan, said he knew instantly it was gunfire. He rushed to the right hand side of the stage in front of Trump, but his view of the former president was quickly blocked by Secret Service agents. He sensed that the agents would try to hustle Trump offstage and into a vehicle from the other side, so he darted over there. From that position, he said, “everything kind of opened up for me."
Read More about how photographers covered the assassination attempt.
evan

[266]

While it started more than 100 years ago, this publication still continues to stay relevant in today’s time.
Over the years, they have popularized words like “socialite”, “guesstimate”, “televangelist”, “pundit”, and “tycoon”.
In fact they’re also credited with introducing the names “World War I” and “World War II”, as opposed to older forms like “First World War” and “World War No. 2”.
Id the publication.

Show Answer
Time Magazine
Time initially possessed a distinctively "acerbic, irreverent style", sometimes called "Timestyle". Timestyle made regular use of inverted sentences, as famously parodied in The New Yorker: "Backward ran sentences until reeled the mind ... Where it all will end, knows God!"
Read More about the publication.

[265]

In 2013, United Nations Food and Agricultural Organization released a report “Edible X: Future prospects for food and feed security”.
It talks about X being a very efficient method of turning various forms of vegetable matter into proteins: we do better eating X that has eaten the grass than we would eating the grass directly.
What was the report recommending we eat?

Show Answer
Insects
"Common prejudice against eating insects is not justified from a nutritional point of view," write the authors of a 191-page report. World population is slated to top nine billion by 2050, and seeing as how arable land is being rapidly swallowed by towns and cities, oceans are increasingly overfished, and climate change is disrupting traditional farming, a new United Nations study proposes a twist on Marie Antoinette's dietary advice: let them eat bugs.
Read about Forbes take on the subject.

[264]

The original name of this band was Smile. In 1970 Tim Staffell, the lead vocalist left the band and was replaced by X Bulsara.
The band changed their name and became music royalty.
Identify the band.

Show Answer
Queen
X being Freddie Mercury, originally named Freddie Bulsara

"Queen was a much better name than Smile, which is one dimensional. Queen suggests both the establishment and a profound antiestablishment rebelliousness which allows us to escape from the rigid convention of the palace and head to a drag club. The name is respectable and disreputable, rebellious and conventional, epic and self-deprecating. Queen is a Janus mask of contradiction rather than a simple smile. It welcomes the conventional and the marginalised. There is room for everyone in the palace of Queen."

[263]

In October 2018, an artwork was sold for £1m at London auction house Sotheby’s. However, as soon as the gavel hit the sound-block, the artwork was (partially) destroyed through a remote control mechanism.
The stunt was called “the first artwork in history to have been created live during an auction”. Also, the price of the work increased almost 18-fold in just 3 years.
Can you identify the artist behind this?

Show Answer
Banksy
Originally called 'Girl with Balloon', the artwork was fitted with a shredder which got activated as soon as the auction was closed. The new 'artwork' was renamed 'Love is in the Bin' and became even more popular.
Read More about the artwork.
Watch the exact moment this happened.

[262]

This method of management has been named after the 34th President of US after he gave a speech about it at Northwestern University in Evanston, Illinois in 1954.
The exact quote goes on as “I have two kinds of problems, the X and the Y. The X are not Y, and the Y are never X.”
Can you identify the method & name X &Y?

Show Answer
We're talking about the Eisenhower Matrix, named after Dwight D Eisenhower.
X is Urgent & Y is Important. The quote goes like “I have two kinds of problems, the urgent and the important. The urgent are not important, and the important are never urgent.”
The matrix has been used by many for time management.

[261]

Identify X and give funda.
United States – X
Russia – GLONASS
China – BeiDou
European Union – Galileo
India – NacIC
Japan – QZSS

Show Answer
These are the different Global Navigational Satellite Systems:
United States: Global Positioning System (GPS)
Russia: Global Navigation Satellite System (GLONASS)
China: BeiDou Navigation Satellite System
European Union: Galileo
Countries with Regional Navigational Satellite Systems:
India: Navigation with Indian Constellation (NavIC)
Japan: Quasi-Zenith Satellite System (QZSS)
Read about the politics of different Global Positioning Systems.

[260]

This method has been successful due to the abundance of Carbon in organic matter and half life of its isotopes to be 5,730 years.
It has been used for scientific methods, like proving the validity of Dead Sea Scrolls, while also disproving the authenticity of artifacts like the Shroud of Turin.
Identify the method/science.

Show Answer
(Radio)Carbon Dating
It is based on the fact that radiocarbon (C14) is constantly being created in the Earth's atmosphere by the interaction of cosmic rays. The resulting C14 combines with atmospheric oxygen to form radioactive carbon dioxide, which is incorporated into plants by photosynthesis; animals then acquire C14 by eating the plants. When the animal or plant dies, it stops exchanging carbon with its environment, and thereafter the amount of C14 it contains begins to decrease as the C14 undergoes radioactive decay. Measuring the proportion of C14 in a sample from a dead plant or animal, such as a piece of wood or a fragment of bone, provides information that can be used to calculate when the animal or plant died.
Watch this Wild Video by Tom Lum on the topic.

[259]

Connect the following images to the word of design.
Accepting a one word term or an explanation.
sku

Show Answer
Skeuomorph, or an object that retains aesthetical design cues (attributes) from structures that were necessary in the original.
For eg, Sticky Notes app on Windows, small handle on maple syrup bottle, calculator app on an iPhone.
Read More behind the design philosophy.